Log in
Impact type: Public Policy
Significance: The research provided evidence for formulation of government policies to ameliorate poor air quality, to which fine particulate matter (PM2.5), O3 and NO2 are the most important contributors; PM2.5 alone reduces average life expectancy in the UK by 6 months and costs £9bn-£20bn a year. The research has been incorporated into UK national guidance and policy-evidence documents for Defra, the Health Protection Agency, and the Environment Agencies.
Beneficiaries are the public and the environment.
Research; date; attribution: EaStCHEM research (1995-2011) (a) established reliable techniques to measure NO2 for a national protocol, and (b) quantified the impact of pollutant emissions on PM2.5 and O3 concentrations, and on hospital admissions and deaths. Heal (EaStCHEM) led the research and wrote, collaboratively in some cases, the reports and the work cited.
Reach: UK wide.
Impact: EaStCHEM spin out Albachem (1994), subsequently incorporated into the Almac group, enabling the latter company to become a world leader in the provision of chemically synthesised proteins.
Significance: Chemical synthesis is competitive with recombinant methods for commercial production of the therapeutic polypeptides that represent ~50% of drugs in big pharma pipelines and have a market value in 2008 of over $13B. The value attributable to Ramage's methods for polypeptide syntheses over the REF period is estimated at approximately £6M.
Beneficiaries: Drug manufacturers, contract research organisations, patients, clinicians.
Research: Studies (1993-6) led by Ramage (at the University of Edinburgh) on new methods for high-yield total syntheses and purification of long polypeptides.
Reach: Almac's protein-manufacturing team remains in the UK with 24 staff members. The Almac Group, headquartered in N. Ireland, has 3300 employees globally (1300 outside UK) and sells to 600 companies worldwide.
CIRCA, Computer Interactive Reminiscence and Conversation Aid, is a novel touchscreen computer system designed to support conversation between people with dementia and their caregivers. CIRCA was based on research into the memory and communicative problems of people with dementia. The beneficiaries of this research are: i) practitioners and professionals in healthcare services, who have improved training and caregiving relationships - a total of 46 NHS, third sector and private care organisations from across the UK have installed CIRCA since 2009; and ii) people with dementia, who have enhanced social interactions and quality of life.
Impact: Economic. The EaStCHEM spin-out company Deliverics has commercialised biodegradable transfection reagents for both the "research tool" and the "RNAi therapeutics" markets (globally valued at £400M and £4 billion respectively). Beneficiaries are the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, and clinicians. The turnover since 2010/11 is £330k and the company currently has five employees.
Significance: Deliveric's agents out-perfom existing materials in term of efficacy and reduced levels of toxicity. They are not hampered by the immunogenicity, manufacturing issues, and carcinogenicity previously seen for viral vectors used as delivery agents. This presents a wide ranging ability to deliver nucleic acids into cells and tissues for biological applications.
Research; date; attribution: EaStCHEM research (2008) led by Bradley reported a family of non-viral DNA delivery agents that offered a highly-efficient and non-toxic method of delivering siRNA/DNA into mammalian cells and tissues. Development and patenting of this technology led to the spin-out of Deliverics Ltd. in 2010.
Reach: International customer base (20 research groups and 10 companies) including specially appointed distributors in Spain (Albyn Medical), South Korea (CoreSciences), and US (Galen).
Impact: Economic. Ingenza is a profitable SME based in Roslin, Scotland, with 34 (12 PhD-level) staff, and a turnover of £2.7M in 2012-13.
Significance: Ingenza Ltd is an established industrial biotechnology (IB) and synthetic biology (SB) company which incorporated in September 2002. Its combination of synthetic organic chemistry with efficient methods of genetic screening, fermentation and engineered microbial strains is used to develop competitive and scalable industrial bioprocesses for pharma, chemicals, energy, natural product and other industry sectors.
Beneficiaries are Ingenza's customers (commercial and the public) and its employees.
Research; date; attribution: In 2002 the Turner group (University of Edinburgh, UoE) published in Angew. Chem. a new strategy of integrated chemo- and enzymatic catalysed routes to high-value chiral compounds that offered dramatic improvements over existing technologies (high yield and enantiomeric excesses often > 99.9%).
Reach: Ingenza now has moved from a focus on fine chemicals to establish long term technology development and licensing agreements with global leading end-users in the chemicals, polymers, biofuels, food and biologics sectors, for example in the sustainable manufacture of poly-methylmethacrylate with Lucite International.
World-leading primate research by the `Origins of Mind' group led to the creation of the University's £1.6M `Living Links to Human Evolution' Research Centre, intentionally located in Edinburgh Zoo where it has pioneered unique public engagement and science education using a range of materials and activities. The research has thus impacted on: i) society and culture: since 2008, around 250,000 visitors per year have engaged with live, on-going science and multiple associated legacy resources and activities; ii) educational practitioners and school children, through classes in the Centre and internet teacher packs that integrate with Scottish Highers; and iii) commercial income to the Zoo.
Impact type: Public Policy; Health (and related economic); Economic.
Significance: the research of the MIDAS (Medical Instrument Decontamination and Screening) group has been used to formulate Department of Health (DH) policy with respect to both the standard of contamination monitoring and the quality of instrument decontamination procedures. The Code of Practice CFPP 01-01, 2012 advocates the adoption of MIDAS's technology throughout the NHS. With effect from July 2012, this is contributing to reducing cancelled operations, 126,000 p.a., due to dirty instruments, minimising the risk of new cases of terminal, Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) diseases, and reversal of the fear-driven, growing trend towards disposable instruments (at an estimated cost of ca £7bn worldwide). As a minimum estimate, this policy helps the work of 20,000 NHS sterile services hospital staff and contributes to the health and safety of all patients who now undergo surgery. Edinburgh Biosciences Ltd is employing four staff (2 PhD level) to manufacture and market MIDAS's new decontamination monitoring instrumentation.
Research; date; attribution: Between 2002 and 2008 the Baxter and Jones groups developed and reported new methods to quantify and remove residual protein contamination on `cleaned' hospital instruments. They set up MIDAS, the Medical Instrument Decontamination and Screening group, to develop and apply these methods for in situ, quantitative, ultra-sensitive detection of surface-bound, biological contamination on medical devices and for the removal of this contamination to levels below the limit of detection.
Reach: The code of practice is currently in force at the UK level. Edinburgh Biosciences is commercialising decontamination monitoring systems for an international market.
Dr Ian Bradley's research on the history and practice of pilgrimage in Scotland has had an impact on public understanding of cultural heritage, on the tourist industry, and on the development of new practices by local authorities, churches and the military. Dr Bradley has been commissioned to devise and lead pilgrimages in Scotland and beyond, which have yielded quantifiable economic benefits of over £250,000. His research has contributed to the conservation of cultural heritage through a range of consultancy work, with impacts including the establishment of the Scottish Pilgrim Routes Forum in 2012 and enhancements to the visitor experience at Iona Abbey. It is continuing to shape pilgrim route infrastructure development by national and local agencies, church groups and the army.
Impact: Economic gains PHYESTA designed 8% of the area of the computer chip for IBM's most recent BlueGene/Q supercomputer product. Global install base of design exceeds $500M.
Significance: Unique experiment in co-design at the cutting edge of technology. Adopted by both IBM and Fujitsu, who have led in Green500 energy efficiency and top500 supercomputer rankings.
Reach: This supercomputer architecture has been installed in labs in the UK, the US, the EU, and Japan and is accelerating computational science and advanced manufacturing around the globe. In the UK the BlueJoule system installed in the Hartree center at Daresbury is driving HPC uptake in the advanced manufacturing sector.
Beneficiaries: IBM, Fujitsu, computational science and the HPC community worldwide.
Attribution: This work was led by Dr Peter Boyle (School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh) in collaboration with Columbia University and IBM.
The Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU) in St Andrews designs, builds and supplies instrumentation and software essential for marine mammal tracking. Specific impacts are: